 Welcome to this virtual undergraduate open day, so I'm from the School of Finance and Management or SFM for short, and I'm just going to run through what we do, what we teach and what you could expect in terms of undergraduate programs if you joined our School of Finance and Management. So I just thought I'd introduce myself first. So I'm Helen, and I'm the undergraduate director, which basically means that I just oversee our two undergraduate programs, our two BSE programs that I'm going to introduce you to you today. You'll find if you join SOAS that a lot of us regional specialists or country specialists as well that we often specialize in one of the countries or regions that SOAS is famous for studying. So obviously, SOAS stands for the School of Oriental and African Studies originally. And I am a Japan specialist so that means I bring Japan and other East Asian countries into my teaching, but also to keep out of my research and you'll find that many of us are in discipline based departments so I'm in the business and management department. But I'm also a member of our Japan Research Center, which pulls together all the Japan academics, Japan focused academics across the school. There's lots of different regional based centers at SOAS. But we also have other themed centers as well. So I'm also a center, I'm also a member of the SOAS Center for Gender Studies, and the SOAS Center for Food Studies. You'll find that many of us sort of have that interdisciplinary focus and are members of other groups at SOAS and as SOAS students you're welcome to attend lectures and seminars of all these types of regional centers and thematic centers. So there's a lot of opportunity for going outside of your department in terms of learning. I teach on two key modules in our BSC degrees. I teach International Human Resource Management, which is a final year module for final year students, and I teach organizational behavior, which is a first year module for all as a compulsory module for all our undergraduate students. So obviously I'm in the area of employment, the employment side of management and how people and managers and people behave in organizations and how organizations behave through that personal perspective. So I'm more about the people management side, people management side of management. In my own research, I work on employment, particularly gender and employment in Japan, and I also more recently are doing research on gender and sport in Japan. So I was very interested in the Tokyo Olympics that took place eventually this year that were postponed from 2020. So you'll find that many of us teach on certain subjects, but we also have research interests that perhaps broaden out from those subjects as well. So we're very, we like to cut across different fields and work on various research projects over time so hopefully you'll find that of interest when you join us. Just to give you a flip so that was an introduction to me we have if you go into our website many of you might have already gone into our website you can see all our programs and all our members of staff there. This is just some of my colleagues here, some of my academic colleagues but you, we all have different specialties in terms of what area of business or financial management we teach on. And we all have different sort of regional interests we're all from all around the world as well we're all very international I'm from New Zealand. A lot of us are from around the world and we all teach on and research on different aspects of international business as well. We are very well ranked school of finance and management in the latest Guardian League tables from 2020. We are ranked first in London and 14th in the UK for business and management so some of you may have looked at some of these league tables this is the one run by the Guardian obviously. You can go in and look, you can choose by you can search by particular topics so we fall into the business management and marketing category, and you can see that, as I said we're 14th in the UK but actually first in London for business and management studies. And that's out of 123 higher educational institutes in the UK. So you can feel confident if you come and study business and management with us, that we, we have a good reputation and a good branding in the market. So the two undergraduate degrees that we offer our BSC management and our BSC accounting and finance. So I'm going to talk very briefly about both those degrees in terms of what you can expect from them. I teach organizational behavior as I said which is a module for both those degrees, but I'm much more in the management genre rather than the accounting and finance, but nonetheless I can give you a brief overview about accounting and finance and if you have any specialist questions on that. So I'll try and answer them and if not I can direct you towards our director for accounting and finance, but if you go into our again those are the links if you go into our website you can look in more detail at those modules, sorry at the modules in the program structure as well. I'll talk quickly about both of those. So our BSC management teachers management and management is obviously a very broad topic so I'm only going to give you a quick definition here. There's lots of different ways you can define what business and management is, but our approach is that we are teaching the study of business. Not just the private sector because we often just think of business as happening in the private sector and private corporations. Of course it does but we also teach it with a nod to a broader environment so we teach, you know, some in some of our regions of the world the public sector is very influential public and private sector organizations so we think about business in both of those sectors, and as well as nonprofit sectors for example. And when we teach about business and management we teach it within not just the economic environment that it operates in, but we also teach it with an awareness of the political and cultural environment that it operates in as well. So that's very important so as that cultural environment is very important. The cultural context within which business and management takes place is very important to us at SIRS. So if you were to study, for example, a BSC management at any one of those other 123 higher education institutes you probably would focus more on that just the economic environment and maybe that sort of Western centric UK American centric Europe Euro centric angle, but we're very keen to take it away from that that narrow scope and think about it more internationally and within particular cultures and regions that SIRS is is obviously famous for researching and teaching him. So that that's one of the key reasons for coming to so as to study business and management. So thank you for considering so as when you're when you're studying a topic like business and management. We offer a very global perspective as I said we like to think about business regionally internationally, and aware of the fact that business is not something that is just directed from the West, that it takes place across the world and there's lots going on in other countries and regions as well from that non Western perspective. We also are able to offer the study of business, you know, in theory, but also in practice so we try and combine as much as possible we try and give you all the theory that you need for a BSC. It is an academic degree of course and so you need to understand the theories and the principles of business and management, but we really try and offer case studies, and, you know, business examples of real issues facing other dealing dealing with real issues, particularly as they go global and in different cultures, for example. So we try and combine that theoretical academic approach with real real time real based examination of how business operates in reality and in practice. And we, we combine that with that conventional analysis of management if you like with that global and regional expertise so as you saw our staff are very multicultural. We are an international teaching body we come from all around the world from various countries, and we all researchers as well as teachers so we put we publish our work. We do academic journals we publish books. So we do our own research as well as bring that to the teaching environment so it's a very international body of expertise that we offer and our students are very international and diverse as well so we get students from all over the world, coming to study at SAS. And that's a fantastic learning environment you're in a very diverse multicultural group of students who bring all of their experience with them and it and it makes for really great learning in particular in, in tutorial classes where we run small groups. So what subjects can you expect to study if you study the best in management we can see all the modules if you go into our web page, but you broadly will study what management is and reflect on how management and business interacts in society. And study these are the two that I teach as I said you're studying how organizations behave, how they're designed but also importantly how people behave within organizations and some of the challenges of that, the challenges of manning managing people as human resources the strategies of managing people. You'll think about business strategy more broadly particularly global strategy, your study topics such as business ethics corporate social responsibility. That's a that's a growing topic of course that businesses want to be seen as a top employer of choice as a socially responsible business. You'll study financial elements. Even now BSE management students have to study basic accounting for example, because accounting is caught all business as we'll see in a moment. So you will, you will be studying some financial and accounting techniques. You'll see something that is included as well. And so you'll get all those basics of management that you would expect to find on any BSE management or business studies program in the UK. But what we also offer at science is the opportunity to flavor your degree with a regional country focus as well. So you can choose to study that's part of your options. So a lot of these will be your core modules that you'll study but each year you'll get to choose from a list of optional modules as well. And you can choose if you want to to flavor that with a regional focus so we offer the chance to study business and management in Japan and Korea East Asia, or in China or in the Middle East as well. So those are the regions that we focus on in our school of finance and management. So we offer that chance to learn more business focused in particular regions but we also if you want to and again it's an option. You can also choose to study a science language. So we are obviously very famous for teaching languages from our regions. And so a lot of our students will opt to also study Chinese, Korean, Japanese or Arabic, but you can choose from across all the service languages. That's just some of the ones that we we have focused on because they go along with the teaching that we do on business in those regions. So you don't have to take up that option you don't have to flavor your degree or tailor your degree with that regional language focus. But if you want to you can and that's our sort of unique selling point that you can do that. You can of course choose options from more business and other business and management related topics. But a lot of our students do take that opportunity to really flavor the BSC management with that so as branding if you like. And I'll just even in the even in the subjects that we teach that a core, we do try and bring in that regional focus anyway. So I'm just going to give you a quick example as I said I teach human resource management, it's called international human resource management deliberately because it has an international flavor. And so I teach all the subjects that you would expect to learn about if you were doing an HRM module anywhere in the UK institutions I teach you know what is best practice HRM. How, how does it operate how is it developed and particularly in the UK US context. And I teach all of the different functions of HRM that you would expect to find in any BSC module focused on human resource management so we talk about resourcing talents we talk about learning and development, monitoring people's performance and thinking about reward and compensation, how you engage and motivate employees, the types of employment relations that you have to be aware of. You teach about diversity and inclusion strategy how to quantify HM, all of these types of topics you would expect to find in any HR module. And that's really how the first half of that module operates. But because it's so as I try and make it international in the second half of the module. So I'm very aware that, as I said earlier, HRM operates in different contexts around the world. So what happens in the UK will not be the same way that managing people operates in Japan and Korea, for example. So we are very conscious of thinking about different societies different demographics different cultures in different histories when it comes to business management. So when I teach HR we also look at people management and HR in our source regions so we have module we have lectures on Japan, China, South Korea and Middle East the GCC countries. We think about how have distinctive strategies and models of HR developed there. What's the history behind them what are the current trends and challenges to what extent is their interaction with best practice from a global global business perspective in terms of inward foreign direct investment there and those countries sending. You know those countries having multinational companies coming out of there as well. And we think about what are the particular HR challenges in those regions that are very different to perhaps in America or the UK for example. So we really do delve into our regions in terms of in terms of studying HRM so we don't just study HRM from that theoretical Western based concept. So I hope that just gives you a flavor of how one module tackles the subject from a more distinctive science branding element and that's very common and lots of our core modules. So that's BSC management just to give you a flavor of that our other undergraduate program that we offer a degree that we offer is our BSC accounting and finance and the program directed for that if you have any really specialized questions about that you can contact. Kemi my colleague Kemi. But I'll try and answer any questions about that as well. So I'm just going to give you a flavor of that degree as well. So that is obviously a much more focused professionally oriented degree compared to management. It's a degree that acknowledges that accounting and finance is a very skilled and technical profession and Excel and arguably one of the most important occupational groups because every business has needs accounting and finance so that accounting and finance profession is important and is at the core of every organization, every organization will have a finance function or somebody who's in charge of finance and accounting. So and that doesn't matter whether it's a public sector private sector nonprofit sector. It's impossible to operate without operational finances and accounting methods so it's a very focused part of of business. And that's why we offer a professional professional based degree there. Although as I said even our BSC management students will study some basic accounting and finance as well because it is at the core of every business and organization. But this is a much more targeted program and it is a professionally accredited degree as well. So even though you'll study it with us at SOAS as an academic qualification, it will also be accredited by a professional body. So it's taught by accounting experts and professionals. So our staff are academics and researchers but they also have professional qualifications themselves to teach accounting and finance and to operate as accountants. It benefits from double accreditation by the Chartered Institute of Management Accounting and the Association of Gosh I can't forget what ASA stands for but it's basically the Chartered Association for Accounting as well. So after your BSC with us you would get six exemptions from ASA and eight exemptions from SEMA. And that's really important because a lot of people who study this program with us will go on to be professional accountants or finance operators in companies and the companies will often require. For example as part of their career promotion or as part of their graduate management training that you need to do professional qualifications with them. But you will automatically get exemptions and accreditation particularly for your first year of study. So that's a real selling point for our degree that they are accredited by these professional bodies. So that's all I'm going to say about accounting and finance. As I said it's not my expert field. A lot of my colleagues are much more expert in that but I can answer any broader questions that you might have. Talking about our both our programs, our BSC programs, our entry requirements are listed there and they're on our website as well. So we're looking for AAB to ABB in terms of A levels or the equivalent in terms of BTEC or IB for example. And we are also looking at Maths Grade 6 for GCSE just because you need to have some level of mathematical ability to be able to cope with the accounting and finance elements even off the management degree. So that's our only requirement is that we need Maths Grade 6. You don't have to have done it for A levels. You don't have to have studied business or economics or anything like that at A levels but we are looking for those kinds of entry requirements. Having said that if you're worried that you're not quite tracking at that level, we do offer conditional offers. We also have quite a solid clearing program as well. So you can go into clearing if you're worried that you haven't had a conditional, conditional offer. You can go into clearing as well and we can perhaps talk about that a bit more because I know we have Amani who's from student admissions. So if there's any questions about applying and admissions and what we accept and how we go about accepting applications, we can talk a little bit more about that as well. So we are ranked really well. In the most recent survey we're ranked fifth in the UK, our department for graduate employability. Our students go on to a range of different careers, but as I said we're ranked well for employability. So that means that the vast majority of our graduates are in employment internships or further study six months after graduation. So that's a really good result and we try and keep in touch with our alumni. Many of us personally link into them through LinkedIn for example to keep track of them and just monitor their, their progress and their careers and it's an easy way for us to keep in touch with them. The SOAS Careers Service also keeps in touch with alumni. And of course the SOAS Careers Service offers lots of ideas and sessions and on campus events for careers during the course of your BSE with us as well. So you can think about your career even from year one you can start thinking about job opportunities and thinking about what you might like to do after you graduate. So we have a good employability record and it's really difficult to say that if you do this degree in management or degree in accounting and finance you'll go into this kind of job because our students go into a variety of positions. So we have some of our some of the companies that our students have gone into listed on our website, but it's also all kinds of professions that they go into. Obviously a lot of our accounting and finance graduates go into financial roles or become accountants professional accountants. A lot of our BSE management students go into all types of graduate training programs banking consultancy all types of business we have a lot of students actually who come from abroad, who are working for family businesses for example who want to get a qualification back to their home countries and run help run their family business or take over the family business. Some of our graduates have even gone into fields like journalism so they can go into lots of different careers and job opportunities over time so it's really interesting to see where they've gone. In terms of methods and assessment. We, our modules have both quantitative numerical and qualitative components so essay writing ability to critically analyze research materials and and and write essays is very important but also, of course, particularly in accounting and finance the numerical ability and ability to do more quantitative analysis is necessary to which is why we asked for GCSE Max. So, most of our modules will include essay writing and assignments and coursework. And that will count towards a certain percentage of your module. There's also, we offer lecture classes so for lecture classes you'll be in a big group, and you'll have a lecturer like I am today, teaching you with the chance of interaction as well, but then for every module that you take you'll also do a seminar or tutorial class so that's a much smaller group that you'll be in. Around 15 students in a tutorial group and that's a chance for you to really interact with your fellow students and brainstorm and really delve into the into the weekly topics and that's a chance for students to lead the classes rather than lectures and academics. We also have written examinations in May June. So, the modules are all made up of assessment in terms of what percentage comes from coursework and what percentage comes from exam so similar to to your levels in that in that respect. And then in the final year of your BSE study you will do a dissertation or an independent study project ISP so that's where you will think about what you've studied over the last three years, and pick a topic that you really interested in and go out there and research it yourself and write up a 10,000 word dissertation and you'll get a supervisor for that and the one to one supervision to help you with that research project. We also offer the chance of networking so we try and invite every fortnight or so we have business seminars where we invite speakers in from the business world. So you have a chance to listen to their real life experiences of running businesses and working in businesses. As I said the service offers a lot of opportunities in terms of events and helping you think about your future career. And then we have, you will always be part of the service alumni, after you graduate so you can link into other alumni groups around the world and we have a lot of international alumni groups in the regions that we teach on as well. So just to end I'm just going to talk about some of the learning outcomes that you can expect so if you study with us of course if you study management and accounting and finance you will learn how, you know how the management of of an organization impacts performance and how you can drive performance. You'll learn about various functions that are crucial to business, marketing, human resource management and accounting so you'll learn all those different departments and functions that crucially make up the operation of a business. You'll reflect on you'll be able to reflect on how a firm's external environment impacts on its on its performance and that can be as I said, not just the market for the product or service that it's operating in. The global environment, the political environment, the broader economic environment, the global environment, the local environment. So all of the things that impact on a firm's performance that are not just internal to the firm. So we think about the sort of broader policy environment as well that firms operated in, and that can be politically focused economically focused and policy driven as well. And really the cultural environment, the cultural environment for institutions is something that's really important to us to that studying of business in the regions that we focus on, particularly in our department the East Asian region, and the Middle East region is a really important area of focus that we study on that we focus on for our delivery of teaching and learning on business and management. One of the broader outcomes that you'll get from studying with us is the ability to really develop critical thinking to enhance your decision making and critical analysis skills, your ability to appraise evidence to appraise source material and critically and summarize and critique material, your ability to interpret company financial accounts, particularly of course if you're doing accounting and finance you'll be really skilled and in depth knowledge of how accounting and finance works for an organization, the ability to interpret data and statistics, so that quantitative and qualitative ability based on critical analysis and essay writing and writing your ISP. And of course, a broader knowledge of international business environments, particularly if you choose, as I said at the beginning to flavor or tailor your degree with the study of one of the countries or regions that we are particularly interested in it so that's some of the learning outcomes that you can expect. So that is the end of my formal presentation, but we've got lots of time left for questions. So I'm happy to take any questions I'll try and answer them to the best of my ability I'm just going to stop sharing here. And also we've got a money from student recruitment on the line and we've got Nadia who's one of our current science students as well who might be able to answer anything you want to know about the student experience at science as well. Yeah, feel free to put your hand up and put your microphone on, put your video on if you like it'd be nice to see you, or you can, if you prefer you can just type into the chat function at the bottom there, and happy to take any questions. But thank you for listening. I hope that's given you a nice insight into what we deliver at the School of Finance and Management. In the meantime while we're waiting for questions, I thought maybe Nadia could speak very briefly just about what she's studying and how she's found so far. I'm a second year management student. And last year, most of the, I mean everything was online so I wasn't really able to come onto campus but this year, I've started to come on campus and we've been able to have face to face tutorials, but lectures have still been online. And last year we, I did study the organizational behavior module. So that was a compulsory module for year one students. And it was really enjoyable. One of the other modules that I studied in year one was introduction to accounting principles of management, introduction to marketing management and society. Those are business maps module and the quantitative analytical module. So there's been more options available. So I've decided to choose a language for my optional modules. And I'm studying Korean as alongside my core modules for the management. So there was a lot of space for you guys to choose what you want to study. It's not all written out for you. Thanks Nadia. I know it's only a few weeks in but how's study of Korean going? How are you finding it? It's going good. So I was, I previously studied it myself. So I would have quite a bit of knowledge on it. So my lectures are going quite well. And they did, they allow you to take a placement test at the beginning to see if you can advance or if they want you to start from the beginning. So that's a perk of choosing languages. Yeah, that's a really good point. So if you come to us with the language that you've already studied or maybe grown up with, then they will give you a placement test so you could start at the beginning. Or you might go into a slightly higher intermediate level of language study. And as Nadia said, we offer language study in year two and year three now. We don't offer it in the first year because we want you to get those core principles of accounting and finance and management embedded first, but we will be offering some more regional studies in first year going forward into next year, which unfortunately weren't available to Nadia last year, but they will, there will be more management in particular regions going forward from 2022 entry from first year onwards. But the language study if you want it comes in at second and third year. Thanks Nadia for that. That was really, I do feel sorry for Nadia's great because they had their first year online, which was really difficult. But as she said we are now running hybrid and we hope to get back fully to on campus so it's been really lovely the last few weeks going into the SOAS campus after such a long time away and having that face to face interaction again I'm really enjoying it and I hope the students are too. Thanks Nadia. I don't see anything coming into the chat. If you have any questions, feel free to pop them in the chat if you don't want to turn on your microphone or your camera or anything. We'll just wait a couple more minutes to see if any questions come through. Yeah, we'll wait, we'll wait for questions but I'll say that if anyone feels a bit shy about asking questions in a public forum where it's being recorded as well. So that other people can dial in if they haven't been able to dial in now particularly our international students who might be in a different time zone to us. But you can go into our website, you can email any of us, or you can email me to ask any particular questions that you might have or any questions that you think about tomorrow that you know you didn't spring to mind today. Feel free to email any of us with any questions and we'll get back to you. So my email is HM for mother HM 39 at so s.ac.uk we could put that into the chat maybe. Thank you. Yeah, that's my email there. So feel free to send an email after this if you don't want to do this in a public forum or any time. We've had a couple of questions come in. The first one is how that's being recorded where can we find it to watch again. They should be sent to you via email if not they'll be in a section my website if you go to our open day section will have the recordings up but it may take a little time for them to be uploaded. And the second question is, is there any reading material you recommend for accounting and finance also is there an interview for accounting finance. We don't have we don't conduct any interviews for any of our admissions process for BC management or accounting and finance so there's no interview stage. It's purely based on your documents and application through UCAS. So we assess that and as I said depending on that you might be offered an unconditional offer conditional offer you may be recommended to go into clearing or get in touch once your results come out and then we can make an offer. In terms of reading material. If you go into our website and there's a list of there's our two programs that you can click on BC management or in this case you can click on BC accounting and finance and all them and you go into that site and you'll see it'll say teaching structure. And if you go into that lists all the modules for year one year two year three. And if you click on any of them you can go in and some of them will have recommended readings in there. So any of our modules you can go in and click in there and see get a flavor of what the modules about who teaches it you'll see the academic there who's responsible for teaching it with the email address there. And it will give you an idea of the subjects but it will also perhaps give you some reading materials as well if you want to do some advanced reading or just get a sense of the type of textbooks or articles that are used. So, given that I'm not in the accounting and finance module convener I can't really say what they use but if you go into the website you'll find that information. Lovely. Thank you. And I'll just put another email in the chat. If you have any sort of admissions questions or quite general questions that are not related to the subject specifically. You can contact study at so ask dot ac dot UK, and they will be able to answer your query if not then they'll be able to forward it on to the relevant department. I'll just put that in the chat for everyone now. Yeah. Yeah, and if you if you go into science dot ac dot UK you'll see all our departments will be listed there. So finance and management is just what a school of finance management is just one of our many departments if you click on any of those departments that will take you into the website. For that particular department you can see who the academic staff are. You can see what BSC programs are offered. You can click on the BSC program see all the modules there and go into each module and see what's in there in terms of readings and subjects. So it's that kind of level of detail that you can expect from the website. You can click on the academics and see what their research profiles like what they teach on what their research interests are as well. So it's all publicly available on the website then. Okay, if there are no more questions and I think we will wrap up this session. I want to say thank you to Helen and to Nadia as well for helping with all the questions. Again, like we said you can contact Helen or you can contact the study inbox if you have any questions, and they will go back to you as soon as they can. Thank you so much for joining everyone hope you have a lovely rest of your afternoon. Thanks for joining us hope to see you at SOAS next year. Good luck and whatever you decide to do for the next chapter of your life after eight levels. Thank you.